Yeonnam-dong bakery, hot weekday: garlic and mugwort breads at Mandong

Open 365 days a year. A takeout-only spot.

I dropped by once again — after a while — at Mandong Jegwa (만동제과), the Yeonnam-dong bakery in Hongdae that's so famous it barely needs an introduction. It's got that kind of charm and flavor that makes me think of it periodically, to the point where I'll push through the sweltering heat just to pick some up and take it home. Since it's open all year round, rain or snow, it was easy to swing by whenever the craving hit and grab some garlic bread.

Reservations, seating, and the Ediya next door at Mandong Jegwa Yeonnam Branch

Weekday reservations were possible. In fact, there wasn't really any noticeable shortage of breads, so you could pretty much pick up whatever you wanted until 3pm on a weekday. Since this Yeonnam-dong bakery is takeout-only, there's no indoor seating here. Still, it has a collaboration going with the 'Ediya' next door — buy bread here, head over there, and they'll discount your coffee and let you eat your Mandong bread on their premises. So if you want to buy a bunch and dig in on the spot, head over to the shop next door and enjoy yourself.

The weekday afternoon display case: how many kinds of bread were there

I went on a weekday afternoon and was happy to see the case was still packed full of bread. All you had to do was choose. Even though it's a takeout-only spot, customers were coming and going every three minutes or so, and I found myself thinking the sales here must be enormous. From sweet potato bread to red bean, injeolmi (sweet rice cake coated in roasted bean powder), soft milk cream, fresh cream, coffee-flavored mocha bread, sweet pumpkin, nuts — the shelves were full of baked goods using all kinds of toppings.

The bacon ciabatta worked well as a meal bread, too, and the well-baked fig campagne was especially popular. Each bread runs about ₩3,000–₩7,000, and with how generous the toppings and portions were, this felt like a genuinely solid-value bakery. The new salt soboru bread reminded me of the salt bread trend that's everywhere these days, and I was curious — but in the end I stuck with what I always get.

Tortilla, sarada bread, and other Mandong Jegwa specialties

What I love here is the tortilla, packed with salty ham, tteokgalbi (grilled short rib patty), onion, and pizza sauce. There's also the sarada bread, drizzled messily with a mix of ketchup and mayonnaise — another delicacy, one that stirs up nostalgia for the '90s. Beyond that, there's mugwort rice cake bread piled high with mugwort rice cake that older folks tend to love, sweet potato bread, a bread baked like yakbap (sweet rice with nuts and dried fruit), maple cream bread, cheese bread, corn mayo bread — the sheer variety made me feel like this place really sets out to bake works of art.

And isn't this squid-ink bread pretty too? Flour bread colored black with squid ink, filled with something like custard cream inside — a sweet, soft dessert. Of course, this Yeonnam-dong bakery favorite also works well as a brunch pick, and the shelves were full of signatures like it.

The best-seller is still the garlic bread

The variety is enormous, isn't it? These works — easily more than 20 kinds — are truly the crystallized survival of a patissier with serious baking sense, refined and perfected over years in the brutal food-business battlefield of downtown Seoul. The variety of toppings was genuinely impressive, and the flavors themselves — savory, sweet, bold, right in line with today's trends — made everything here especially popular. But among it all, the thing that still flies off the shelves is this bakery's garlic bread, the original. The baguette is thoroughly soaked in a savory, buttery sauce that seems mayonnaise-based, so just one bite and your happiness is fully recharged.

There's also bread shaped round like a baby's bottom, stuffed generously with cream inside. Chocolate bread, injeolmi cream bread — a whole lineup of bakery goods that pretty much anyone would like. Whatever you pick is delicious, and it's the kind of magnetic place that makes you want to come back and try something new next time.

Today's pick: garlic bread, mugwort rice cake bread, and chestnut red bean mugwort bread

So the three items I picked today were: the signature, flagship garlic bread (₩7,000), the mugwort rice cake bread with its sweet blend of mugwort and rice cake (₩4,900), and the chestnut red bean mugwort bread with chestnut, red bean, and crispy, sweet injeolmi bean powder all mixed together (₩7,200). All three lean sweet, so cutting them into small pieces and eating them like a snack with coffee or milk is just perfect.

If I had to think of a bold bakery the whole country could love — a little much to eat often, but great to come back to periodically — this place is definitely it. It also has locations in Yeonnam-dong and Gangneung, so it's gaining fame nationwide.